Devoured In Darkness
by ColourOutOfSpace
Summary: First thing's first - this is a fanfic of the mod of the same name. it can be found on the fallout 3 nexus. Now, moving on.  The Lone Wanderer receives a distress signal coming from Minefield and decides to check it out. Cannibalism awaits.
1. Chapter 1

I'm going to tell you a little story about time spent in the Capital Wasteland. I have many like it (and some that are worse), but this one…this one will let you know precisely why DC is considered one of the worst parts of the wasteland.

As usual, the message popped up on my pip-boy at a most inopportune time. Said moment was while I was cowering behind a tin shack as Jericho traded shots with a small band of raiders.

"Help me! I was exploring a house in Minefield and fell through the boards! I'm trapped in the basement, and I think one of my legs may be broken!" the rather nasal voice squeaked." If you help me, I'll share some of the loot I found."

Jericho shot me a rather dirty look, as if to say (or wheeze, in his case) "now it not the time." I sighed, checked my assault rifle, and decided to "spray and pray," as they say. I heard a yell of "I'm hit!" and another of "you'll pay for that!" as a splatter of gunfire rippled across the tin siding of the abandoned shack.

"Kid, d'ya have a grenade?" Jericho asked. I nodded and handed over several plasma grenades. He turned, muttered something about having to do all the work, and tossed one over the side, in the general direction of the gunfire, whoops and yells.

The raiders' various cries were cut off by the sound of an explosion. The blue-green fire lit up the area, and I soon found pieces of wayward youths raining from the sky (they fact that I, myself am a wayward youth of similar nature is unimportant). Jericho lit up a smoke, took a drag, and blew smoke in my face. "There ain't much money in bein' good, kid, but there IS a helluva lot of trouble." He took another drag. "If I'm gonna keep putting my ass on the line for you, you gotta make it worth it."

I thought for a moment, then clapped him on the shoulder and said "Jericho, if we help that woman out of that basement, she will, out of gratitude, pay us. You get to keep whatever she gives us." He (surprisingly) thought for a moment.

"And if she gives us junk?" he asked.

"If she gives us junk, we kill her and take anything worth taking. Sound good?"

"Hell yeah! Sounds great, kid. Good to see you're not pussyfooting around."

"Then let's go, before she gets out herself."

I tracked her radio signal with my pip-boy. The signal was new, but seemed to be on an automatic, repeating loop. My suspicion aroused, I told Jericho to wait outside in case it was an ambush.

"Kid, if it's an ambush, you'll want me there."

"Slavers have been sighted in this area. It won't do us any good if we're both caught, and I'll need you to bail me out if they catch me." He snorted, grudgingly agreed to wait outside ("Don't run off with the goods, kid, or you'll regret it.") and promised to keep a look-out.

As soon as I stepped inside, I knew it was a trap. Was it the narrow corridor, with the two doorways blocked off? The bloody skull resting on the table at the end? The odd smell suffusing the hallway? No. No, it was the fact that, as soon as the door closed behind me, it locked, and I was unable to pick it. I heard a click, saw a canister jump through a gap in the blockade, into the corridor, and thought 'so this is how it ends.' Instead of fire and shrapnel tearing through my vital organs as expected, gas exploded out of the canister. I felt dizzy, my vision blurred, and I fell for what felt like forever in the comforting and soft embrace of unconsciousness.

I awoke with a dry mouth and a slight headache in a dark cave. My armor, my weapons, my chems – everything was gone. I tried to check my pip-boy, but it didn't reveal much. Location was nothing but static, but at least the light still worked, albeit weaker than usual. I worked my way around the cave, trying to find an exit. I didn't enter through the cave roof, that was certain; low-hanging stalactites crowded every inch of it.

I stumbled on a skeleton, a red light shone down and I felt pain, as if something was gnawing on my flesh. I stumbled away, and a note fluttered down before me. I picked it up, looked around, listened for sounds, heard nothing, and read it.

ARE YOU PREDATOR OR PREY?

I looked around, startled, but nothing came rushing out of the darkness to attack. Nothing, loads and loads of nothing, just darkness and silence, and I was afraid.

I felt the familiar kick of adrenaline, felt panic try to overtake me, and stalked from side the side, all around the cave, trying to find some way, any way out. I was, eventually, rewarded with a short, narrow tunnel that dead-ended, but not before several more notes had fluttered down and an equal number of bites had been taken out of me. At the end of the tunnel was another woman. My hopes soared when is aw her, and crashed when she didn't seem to be breathing. I checked her for a pulse, found none, tried to ignore the words PRETTY LITTLE FEAST carved into her flesh and the strange hunger I felt.

After this rather grisly discovery, a doorway opened up at the end of the tunnel. 'I've died,' I thought. 'I've died and gone through a Purgatory of some sort.' I opened the door, and found myself in hell.

Well, not really. I was inside an identical cavern, except I was literally swimming in blood, just, blood, everywhere. I felt like I was perpetually drowning. My lungs were on fire, I couldn't breathe, they were full of blood but I wouldn't lose consciousness. Somehow, I could see in it, through it, as well as I could with water.

That's when I noticed the bodies. All of them were naked, skinless, floating at the top, in between the stalactites. They all had my body, and the same basic facial structure. Each body's abdominal cavity had been emptied; the organs had been removed through a small slit, and inside each slit was a token. Collecting tokens from the half-dozen bodies floating (how is this happening they have no internal gases from decomposition they shouldn't be floating when I put my hand in the ribs I feel them all think I might be sick) yielded a copper key.

I found that, after much searching (top and bottom, side to side, where oh where is the exit?) the key opened a small model house, down on the bottom of the cave. The prize inside? A fresh, still-beating heart. Since everything was incredibly dreamlike (or nightmarish; depends on your tastes), I reasoned that whatever place I was in followed dream logic. With this in mind, I ate what was a clearly a still-beating human heart. Yet again, everything went black.


	2. Chapter 2

Alas, my hopes for freedom were unfounded. I woke up, no worse for wear, in a cookie-cutter kitchen, in a cookie-cutter house, the same kind that I routinely sacked for goods. I still had no armor, weapons, or chems. I sighed in disappointment; and here I'd thought that maybe, just maybe I'd wake up, find that the nightmare was over. I looked around, saw a knife on the counter, and took it like the kleptomaniac I very well may be.

I decided to check the oven, because what if there was real, not-made-of-people food in there? Heat blasted out, scorching my face and arms. I pulled away, but the fire had stopped as soon as it had started. I cautiously checked the oven again; no heat, but there was what seemed to be a human arm.

Disturbed, I closed the oven and exited the kitchen. Walking into a familiar little hallway, I noticed a small table, with a bloodstain where the skull used to be. Then, it talked.

"Help me, miss!" the little voice piped. I stared dumbly in shock. "She cut me up and hid my body parts!"

"Uh, wh-who?" I tentatively asked.

"The lady! Please, kind stranger, find my parts and put me back together!" So, deeply unsettled, I set off for both the worst scavenger hunt and the grisliest puzzle.

The right arm was the first part I found; it was the arm in the oven. As soon as I put the arm on the small table, it gurgled and cooed. At that moment, I swore to never again actively help people, especially if they sent out looping radio messages.

Muttering to myself, I checked bookcases in the den, looked under tables and chairs, and even back in the kitchen. Unfortunately, there were no body parts in plain sight. "Hidden indeed, "I mumbled to myself. I had looked in the bathroom, but the only things of interest were the sink faucet (which spat boiling water) and the first aid kit full of toxins, including arsenic, cyanide, anthrax, and ipecac.

"Well, if I ever need to end it all, or immediately regret swallowing poison, I know where to look," I said to myself. I sighed, walked into the den, and plopped down on the sofa. The middle cushion was…strangely lumpy. Blood leaked through the cushion. I seriously considered taking every last poison in the first aid kit.

Suddenly, the table yelped, started sobbing, and I was unpleasantly reminded of my not-promise to the crazy talking table. I cut the cushion with my handy-dandy knife and pulled out (ohgodnowhatisthiseven) several pieces of a skinned left leg. I gathered them up in my arms, ignored the blood smearing on my chest, and shuddered my way to the table.

"Please please please put me back together!" it implored. I wanted to retch, and gagged a little when it asked me to put the leg back together all the way. I held myself together, though, and put all the pieces in their proper places.

"Guess it's a good thing dad taught me all about medicine," I tried to laugh. My voice broke, and I almost sobbed.

"Thank you, friend! But some of my parts are still missing! Won't you please look for them?" Its childlike voice sounded strangely familiar, like an old memory, or a forgotten dream. I shook the strangely nostalgic feeling off and checked the other sofa cushions for parts. No dice there, but when I checked the chair cushion, I found the other arm.

I decided to forgo back and forth trips in an attempt to find all pieces, and went upstairs. For some strange reason, a feeling of dread swept over me as I climbed the stairs. The rooms were…dusty, as opposed to the rather clean appearance of the rest of the house. The first of the three rooms was a kid's room, with bunk beds and a toy box. I ignored the beds and the sleep they promised; any sleep would be restless and full of nightmares, if I managed to sleep at all.

A small teddy bear sat on the toy box. I swiped at the bear to know it off. To my surprise, it growled and bit my hand. "Ow! You little bastard!" I cried. I shook it off, cradled my injured hand, and glared as it settled back on the box. "I'll get back to you later," I threatened, shaking my bloodied hand at it. It simply growled.

I peeked in the bathroom, saw nothing of interest other than a tub full of Abraxo Cleaner and Dish Detergent, and moved on to the master bedroom. On a desk sat a computer. Next to that sat a flaming skull. I went back to the bathroom, turned the faucet on, and got a thick, congealed substance instead of water. I turned the faucet off, gagged a bit, and then checked the computer.

It had dossiers for 6 people, one of whom was me. Four of the six were deceased, with me and a woman named Mary still alive. I checked my name. Within was the simple link "consume." I clicked it, out of curiosity, tried to hit back, and got the message "Error: Jessica must be consumed." Within THAT was three more options – abort, retry, and ignore. I clicked abort.

The computer exploded at that point. I landed halfway across the room. The skull, no longer aflame, landed next to me. I picked it up, looked at the spot that now held only computer components, and checked the desk. Within, I found a lighter. A grin lit up my face.

I made my way to the kid's room and made a mental note of the partially covered floor safe and the cabinet. When I saw the bear, I gave it a glare. "Well, hello there," I smiled. "I'd like you to meet a friend of mine." The bear growled, leaped at me, lit up like a light and became a small, screaming pyre. It twisted and writhed as the flames devoured its stuffing. Stepping over the fire, I opened the toy box and beheld another leg. I picked it up, and, with a spring in my step, skipped down the stairs to the hallway and its table.

"Oh please-!" it began.

"Look! Parts!" I yelled, flinging them on the table.

"Stop! You're hurting me!" I looked at it disbelievingly. "Where is my torso? My heart, my brain? I need all my parts!"

"All right, all right, calm down. Any idea where they might be?"

"I don't know, I just want to be whole again!" I sighed and set off to find the rest of it. I went upstairs, to the master bedroom, and checked the cabinet. Carefully balanced within was a child's torso.


End file.
